Tag: style

Diamond Media, Darlings

Diamond Media, Darlings

by Rebecca M. Horner ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Those of you who follow us on Twitter or listen in on Ginny or I tweeting about the game have probably heard about Astranar’s pop icon and international star, Rose Neptuna. Did you know that Astranar has a recently flourishing music and media industry? No? Well buckle in folks, because today we’re doing a (pseudo) tour of the Diamond Media Complex.

Think of the media complex as a bit like the lots of Hollywood Studios and the music studios of LA thrust together. While Astranar has several outdoor theaters and stages for performances, the media complex is where movies are shot on sound stages, music albums are recorded, TV programs have their interviews, and much more. A sprawl of buildings, studios, and a limited number of outdoor sets and storage sheds, it still manages to blend in with the Capital’s architecture style (lest they wear out their welcome!). While the public is kept out by a guard and gate, you almost have to know where you are looking to know what you are looking at.

The complex is a bit of a catch-all for everyone who is anyone in the media business. There are some noted folks who the main character (MC) are going to have contact with:

  • The mentors, of course! Both the mentors for the Light Riders and the Shadow Riders have formed girl groups: Doe Re Mi and HOOT, respectively. In addition to that, the Citrine Light mentor, Viva, has a special interest in dancing, and the Shadow mentor Var has an interest in acting and modeling.
  • The SSS, or the Style Secret Service, these are dressers, hair stylists, wardrobe assistants, and fashion designers. With something as important as costumes and appearances on the line, you know they make their appearances! Most big names have at least one attached to them, though some seem to have difficulty keeping them. While Fashion Week is their Christmas, the media complex is home to most of them and their bread and butter for their daily lives. There’s a bit of an internal conflict though–Rose Neptuna brought French agents with her when she moved, and the local agents aren’t sure how they feel about that.
  • Agents and managers are the white blood cells of any media industry. They keep the schedules between different projects, different stars, and all the legal paperwork coordinated so jobs can function! Rather than having a separate firm, the agents and managers are actually worked into the structure of the complex. Less issues with paperwork and agency rivalries, but sometimes that makes it hard to get the agent you want! Some noted agents include Yvenne DuNoir, Anna Highflute, and Jillian Pearlchord. They manage some of the top industry professionals…or a few summer girl groups that the mentors are involved with.
  • The talent! Besides Rose Neptuna, there are other celebrities in Astranar to meet. Hip-hop artist and fashion designer, Hi-Felicity, the boy band the Heartbreakers, and even some talent comes in from outside of the country. In the acting world, you have Jameela and Harumi Softreed as the top actresses in the country, and you can’t forget the models, where Harumi has to compete with her twin sister, Miyuki, and there are always shenanigans where Sydney Azureballet goes. Besides just meeting these actors, actresses, dancers, and singers, we do offer a chance for the player to experience being a minor talent themselves and all the hard work and practice that goes into it. (But more on our professions ideas in another blog post.)

So what all does the Diamond Media Complex put out? Astranar Fashion Week is one of their big productions, but summer in Astranar promises some huge blockbusters, from continuations of popular franchises to new premises, and that’s before you get to the TV shows. All these side stories are horse centric (and honestly are movies/TV shows that Ginny and I would go to see, not gonna lie). We took our inspiration for these Easter-Egg type media from some of our own favorite movies and books. It can be a little odd (like the one that is basically the premise of The Black Stallion…but in space), or it can be something more familiar that will bring to mind Horseland or the Saddle Club. In addition to all this, there is going to be an all-out summer smash concert before school starts again, bringing together talent from all over Argentum to participate.

We didn’t necessarily have to build a media complex into the game. But by doing so, it helps us centralize a lot of odds-and-ends that the player may need, both for professions and for story advancement within the capital. It also gave opportunities for the players to just have fun, including with their friends.

What in the WORLD is Victorian Edge?

What in the WORLD is Victorian Edge?

by Rebecca M. Horner ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

So we keep describing Astranar as having hung on to the Victorian Era a little longer than the rest of the world. What does that even mean? Well, I’m going to describe the over all feeling of the world that will hopefully help, and then Ginny has folders upon folders of inspiration pics to provide visual reference.

While a lot of the districts have their own influences and styles (we’ll get into each one eventually), there are some things that have carried over across Astranar, developing either concurrently with the rest of the world or arriving with the latest shipwreck. For those who have no idea what that means, think about how pyramids appeared in both South American and northern Africa, and numerous other ideas that develop across the globe in different countries that have no contact with each other at the time.

As for the lasting footprint of Victorian influence, it’s a mix of the Gothic cathedral style, then it goes into things like French (or Second) Empire, Queen Anne, and Gothic Revival. Mostly, it is a hodge-podge of the over the top “gauche” type of decor they favored, though the fascination with death and spiritualism will be centralized to one area or one time of year, since our focus is more on healing and balance.

Some key things that you will see are gingerbread trim on houses and buildings, scalloped pattern roofs, and intricate iron work on both the houses and the streets. (We have some beautiful and easily specialized ideas for the street lamps and manhole covers, I’m excited.) The roads around the farms and forest paths are dirt, because roads are expensive, but the ones in town are cobblestone rather than pavement, which is better for horse hooves and much better to adjust to the town size as needed. They work around or over hills rather than digging through and leveling, the same for the railroad tracks.

Interior wise, we drew inspiration from the Morris wallpapers and vintage or even just vintage inspired furniture pieces, in both American 1950’s and more traditional Gothic. Not only do we want to provide a variety for players to really customize their experience, but we want things to work together without fighting each other in terms of style. You can have your goth or punk rock room, or you can be as frilly and princess like as you desire, or you can splash loud colors all over the walls, but the goal is to make the visuals all flow for the sake of the game.

Alright, now to the part I’m pretty sure everyone cares the most about. What are the characters going to look like? Well, fashion wise, we tried to cover all the genres—hip hop, preppy, vintage, punk, fancy, and even androgynous. But we pushed them to fit within our idea of Victorian inspiration and what Ginny calls the blocks that we have built into the game without getting…ridiculous. You’ll see a lot of the classic shapes of the 1950’s, as well as modern casual fashion. Okay, and yes, there’s some Lolita-and-or-school girl aesthetic going on, and that’s my fault. I have a lace and ruffle addiction.

Other countries and styles are hopefully going to make their way into the game, such as hijab and Hindu forehead markings, but those are additions rather than something we’ll be starting with. While we want to be inclusive, we made categories to make it easier to implement the needed fashions and blocking and sheer levels of programming that it will require. So stage one is basically the bare basics, and then adding some variations of that. Hopefully by the time we’re finished with the basics and their variations, we’ll have the support we need to make the rest happen.

As for why we went down this way… This really fits Ginny’s and my shared aesthetic. While sometimes we are on opposite ends of the spectrum as far as color and decorations go, the bones tend to fall in this direction. This also serves as a great point-of-difference for us, since most MMO’s are either directly in the modern setting only, or they are medieval fantasy…ish, though the historical accuracy of the fashion is usually questionable. By going in this direction, we circumvent the problem of potentially having fashion trends age the game, as well as provide a unique experience for the player. Sounds like it’s all coming up roses. Speaking of roses… See you next week!

Target Audience: For the Developer

Target Audience: For the Developer

by Rebecca M. Horner ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The target audience of Mystic Riders is a female gamer ages 12 to 16 with the optimum target market going as low as 10 to as old as 25. The content and story of the game is geared towards teens. From issues they face to the genre tropes they adore, we’re writing with them in mind and what they enjoy. Mystic Riders is being approached from a unique standpoint in the gaming industry—it is built narrative first! It’s meant to be a ‘safe’ game and steer away from excess skin, common fears and phobias, politics, religion, and sex. (While all sexualities and skin tones should and will be represented in the game, the story doesn’t hinge upon the player being a lesbian for example.)

In basic mechanics, Mystic Riders is a standard MMO, farming, puzzle, and racing game. We’re aiming for girl players, thus why the Main Character is a female-only option. There is a distinct lack of games that target girl gamers, even now, for a real gaming experience. Most games fall under boy-centric or gender neutral in terms of tone. What few girl games there are tend to fall into gendered “safe” types, so basically makeovers, fashion, and playing house like cooking and home decorating. There isn’t much investment in other types of games because girl gamers are seen as a group who don’t spend money, which creates a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Girls don’t spend money on games because there aren’t any good games for them, so no one makes a good game deliberately for girls.

If boys want a horse game, they have Red Dead Redemption (2). It’s past time that girls got something with that amount of investment and care put into it.

This means that Mystic Riders needs to take the next step forward in MMO gaming by focusing the mechanics on games that girls like to play that are catered to mostly by the mobile market. This means featuring mini-games seamlessly into game play (instead of making them different screens). Mini-games like trace the pattern, clean the screen, falling objects, follow the keyboard pattern, red light green light, bubble shooters and matching color patterns, etc. are a very large part of Mystic Riders along with actual jigsaw style puzzles and environment puzzles that involve magic or using pets.

Mystic Riders is an MMO Racing Game that is stepping towards platformer gaming style mechanics. Whether it is having the player change size, or jump from “platform” to “platform.” Mystic Riders is set up to be a multi-level map with places that are exclusive to certain “class” types. At the same time, it is also a horse competition game, and the mechanics of the races are geared towards the players using skill to hit the buttons at the right time and using the correct speed to make it over obstacles or do the right steps.

There is even a choose-your-own-adventure feel to the game as the story is set up for the player to be able to choose sides at several points in the game. As a result, there are 8 different ways the story can play out. We want the player to be able to play past story lines, and have extra character slots in order to be able to play the game all 8 ways if they choose.

Because Mystic Riders is aiming for an older audience, at least in terms of where normally girl-exclusive games stop, the graphics are chosen to appeal to that older player by being more realistic. We desire the graphics to be in the vein of Black Desert Online, Moonlight Blade, or Guild Wars 2. This will make the game stand out from competitors like any Barbie horse game or Star Stable Online. The level of graphics in Ostwind are about par for what we are looking for.

Being just a game in today’s 24/7 social media atmosphere isn’t possible. That’s why Mystic Riders is geared towards being highly merchandisable from dolls, make-up, clothing, to notebooks and calendars, to novels, comics, and webisodes. We understand that to survive in an over-saturated market, you have to be a brand.

Mystic Riders is a brand created by female story driven gamers for female story driven gamers. That is the market we desire to tap.

Target Audience: For the Player

Target Audience: For the Player

by Rebecca M. Horner ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Mystic Riders is designed to be enjoyable for the person who loves horses no matter what their age. We want this game to be enjoyable and relatable for tweens, teenagers, and young adults to the older adults who are young at heart by providing an enjoyable story with challenging puzzles and things for players to do simply to relax.

We are you. We love Miraculous Ladybug (at least the first season), Love Live, Sailor Moon, and PreCure. We adore Ever After High and Monster High. We get tempted by the Bayer horses every year until we remember cats will destroy them. (Ginny at least played with Barbies the way they are supposed to be played with, and wishes they’d go back to some of the older style merchandising. Becca collected the horses more than the dolls.) We play horse games and farming sims and get lost in a good story about teens in impossible love. (Give us all the fanfic! Give. Give now!) We have a weakness for sparkly and pretty things. And to us, pink is just another color in a huge rainbow of colors. (Bring back Lisa Frank!)

We’ve created this game for people no matter their gender or age who love exploring, story based play and have a spirit of competition. If you like games like Barbie Horse Adventures and Star Stable Online, we hope that you’ll like our game—a game where your main character (MC) can ride and take care of a horse in a huge open-world-style map that includes mini-games like Disney Princess games, platforming elements like Sly Cooper and Okami, farming and building elements, dress-up, and as much customization as we can stuff into a game.

Customization is important. Your MC is a girl. There is no one type of girl. There is no one right way to be a girl and we want to provide enough options that everyone has a way to show who they are and be represented in the game! (Even if some of it may have to wait for expansions. Fingers crossed.) Representing the incredible rainbow of who we are as people is important to us. Prep. Goth. Boho. Retro. Punk. Hip Hop. Country. We’ve got you covered.

There’s a lot more to Mystic Riders than caring for and racing horses. There are friendships to be made, a world to save, and a huge mystery to solve. Do things have to be the way they are? Can everyone get along? Who is Rose Neptuna really? And why does Bence have to be so cute anyways? Questions like ‘who am I?’ and ‘what am I going to be when I grow up?’ are balanced with silliness and fun. (Who knew that goats love pajamas?) And let’s be honest, sometimes those questions don’t go away even when you’re an adult. (Ginny can attest to this.)

There’s so much more to the story that it can’t all be contained in the game. There’s more to Mystic Riders (or what we want of Mystic Riders) to be more than just a game. We want books and webisodes and merchandise. Not to say that the story in the game won’t be complete, but who are Vesper Leilament, Charlotte Mistwaltz, and the other mentors? How did they come to Astranar? What are they up to behind the scenes?

And who doesn’t want a bit of their game to sit on their shelf? Dolls and horse figurines, outfits, make-up, and notebooks can mean that every player can have a little bit of Astranar and Mystic Riders in their day to day life. And given that Ginny is a fashion designer, well, maybe, if we’re lucky, there will be clothes from the game in stores with pockets (because clothes should be both pretty and functional). (Ginny and Becca are both serious about this pocket thing.)

Mystic Riders is a game created by those who love horses and are young at heart for those who love horses and are young at heart.